Knowing
by peggie sue
Summary: /"What happened in the basement?"/ The conversation that should have happened at the end of Undercover. EO.


_A/N: I know, I know. I have about 80 gazillion other stories to update, but I found this on my computer, tweaked it around a bit, and quickly became re-obsessed. This takes place during the scene at the end of Undercover, only this time, actual words happen. Good. All mistakes are purely my own, these characters are not mine, and you should probably listen to Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah while reading. Enjoy!_

"What happened in the basement?"

And you shrug and shake your head and you feel your eyes brimming again, for the thousandth time that day, because you had wanted it to be him. You had wanted it to be him, so badly, so embarrassingly badly, who had saved you. You feel yourself being alright and moving like you're alright and acting like you're alright, but you aren't, you _aren't_, and despite how desperately you need him to know all of this there is no way that you can possibly tell him.

Because you are Olivia. And he is Elliot. And words are not something that you do, confessions are just nothings that you never bother to give, because you imagine that he knows every nuance of your every thought anyway. You're only ever really half of a whole when you're with him, when you're without him.

"I... Nothing happened, Elliot."

"Liv." And that is his voice, his syllables, your name.

You feel yourself give up, shatter a little, because he's sitting on the edge of your desk and if he moves an inch his thigh will knock your coffee over and you're tired, you're just so tired, and you think that since he's part of you anyway it doesn't necessarily have to count if he sees you break like this, collapse like this.

And then the words are coming out of you and because you cannot find a way to physically stop them, you don't. You think that must be your voice cracking but you aren't sure, you're never sure, you have not been sure of anything since your wrists had been cuffed to a wall and all you could hear were your own screams echoing in your ears, quiet, unable to penetrate the addicting silence.

He looks at you.

"El, he had me down there. He had me. I couldn't get away."

You hear him swallow, a beat passes. "Harris did?"

His voice is choked, dry. He knows anyway, he always would have known, and attempting to keep this to yourself would have been fruitless, pointless.

You feel yourself nod and you aren't there, you aren't in the precinct, you're watching everything happen all over again and your heart picks up because you need him to save you this time, make you safe this time, and he can't, he can't unless you tell him, unless you force the words to come. You feel regret settle into your bones, and it's too familiar.

"I could have stopped it. I should have been able to stop him—"

"Liv, don't."

"No, Elliot, I—you don't understand. I didn't even... I didn't even realize he was our guy until it was too late. Until... until he had the door locked behind us and there was no way out, and I just saw the mattress and I knew... I _knew_, Elliot, and I couldn't do a damn thing to stop him." You spit the words and those might be your tears on your cheeks but you don't know anymore, you never know, you can't know anything.

You wish he wasn't next to you, not right now or in any other moment that you're reliving this, but he is. You realize on some level that you need this. He's seen you break before, he's done the breaking, he knows you aren't the woman you try to be or pretend to be whenever you aren't alone. It's Elliot, and he knows. He has always known everything, and this time it hurts, because you don't want him to know that you aren't strong. You don't want him to know anything, but you want him to know it all, too, and you sort of want to sit at your desk and dissolve into the awkward silence back to a place where you could move about your lives as if both of you weren't suffocated by it. This, and everything else between you.

There is too much between you now. There is too much to tell, too much that has been quiet for too long and too much that is too heavy to lift or move or slide away so that the two of you can fit together the way you should be able to. Should. You realize that you want that, you want to fit, and you don't. You don't fit with him anymore and suddenly the tears are coming faster because all you need is for him to save you now. But he's faster than you are.

He's off the desk, and there is a hand on your shoulder that is connected to his arm and chest and body and heart, somewhere, and you think that maybe this is it. Maybe all you'd had to do all along was shatter so openly, and you wonder where your history will go from here. You don't know. There is very little that you do know, because a man in a uniform had taken it all away from you. You have been left with nothing, and the new nothingness overwhelms you when it merges with the nothingness that Elliot has given you for so, so long.

"Liv, Liv, you've gotta slow down okay, you gotta breathe," and his voice is cutting through whatever it is that's ringing in your ears.

_I can't_, you say, but silence falls out instead. _Hold me now, please, _you say, but the words are stuck like all the others. You're scared. That's something you know.

"_Olivia_." His voice is ragged, and he's pulled your chair out from your desk with you still in it. You falter as your elbows slide from where they rested on the desk, and your body is unsteady. You feel shaky, out of control, and nothing is up to you anymore. This is where you lose it completely, and this is where Elliot will finally see that you're so, so full of shit. You inhale, sharply, and your hands fly to your cheeks because you have to get the tears away, you have to.

Your chest is rising and falling quickly, and the breaths are coming faster than you can count and soon they're so quick that they don't matter and you're drowning in it, all the somethings and nothings and fines and maybes and all that is and isn't between you. You can't stand it, so you close your eyes and swipe the moisture from underneath them. He can't see you like this, he shouldn't, but you like the way his hands are closing around your wrists and tugging them down to your lap. You're addicted to the way his eyes are locking on yours, and you need this, you need the way he's looking at you.

Right now, this time, you are not nothing. You are not the person across the desk or in the passenger seat, you are somebody. He has saved this moment for you.

"You're okay," he breathes, and his hands squeeze yours before finding the sides of your face and finishing what you'd started by wiping the mess away, and tucking your hair behind your ears. "You're okay," he says again, and maybe he's just as afraid as you are, because neither of you know one another this way.

It's the stranger that's doing this, because it can't be Elliot. It has never been Elliot that's heard you like this, held you like this. Held you. You realize that that's what he's doing as he bends to meet you halfway and pull you close to him—desperate, rough, and he's just like you are. He's broken just like you are.

Your fingers are grasping his hair, his arms, and you're still. You don't want to breathe because this, this is delicate, and breathing will break it. Living will break it, because you cannot live like this, neither of you were built or made or supposed to live like this. It's too much, but it's too little, because all you want to do is stay like this forever. You wonder fleetingly if this is what comfort feels like as he starts to talk to you again.

"I should have been there," and the words are rough and honest and guilty in all the places they shouldn't be. Maybe that's what love feels like—guilty—but he doesn't love you, he can't.

"_No_," you breathe, "no," and you need to tell him that Fin got to you, and you have no reason to be upset like this. Terrified like this.

"I'm your partner, Olivia. I... I'm your _partner_."

_I should have had your back_.

You wonder how you've gotten like this, how you've reached the point where you can hear the unspoken in all the spaces where the spoken means nothing.

"I'm fine," you offer, but you aren't because you're clinging to him like it means everything even though it can't, and you feel him grab you closer with his whole body. You have never had someone to protect you like that. You feel him shake and you wonder if he's laughing at the fact the words always seem to mean their opposite.

"You're not, Liv. I'm not."

"Fin got to me in time. H-he got there, El. He found me."

"... shouldn't have been lost," and the words are muffled against your neck because somehow his face has become pressed to your shoulder, your bones. You need this, you've needed this.

You take a shaky breath, and it's watery. It's broken and trying not to be, and you feel your limbs untangling from his. You pull back, and his hands slide from around you to grip your wrists. He runs his thumbs over the skin there and his eyes are focused on the blue of your veins and the lines carved into your palms and you wonder if he's studying the bruises from the handcuffs or searching for a heartbeat.

"Nothing happened," you whisper, and you hate that you're strong again. Composed again. "I... I was scared there, Elliot. But Fin got to me. He..." you sigh. "He scared Harris before anything could happen. H-he was so close, and I was screaming, and helpless, and I saw Fin and just... I don't know. I shouldn't have let it come to that. I shouldn't have needed him so save me."

He swallows. "It wasn't your mistake, Olivia," and his thumbs brush faster. "It... you can't beat yourself up over this. You can't be guilty."

"Neither can you." The words are quiet. He scoffs.

"It's funny how we tell all of this shit... all of it, everyday, to so many victims. How you aren't supposed to feel guilty. How it's never our fault. And then it happens to us, and everything we've ever said means nothing."

_Us_, he'd said, _And then it happens to us_. Plural.

You shrug, and you're still wobbly. "You couldn't have known, Elliot. There was no—you couldn't have known," and maybe you're telling yourself this time. He couldn't have known. He couldn't have been there. Even if he'd wanted to, the entire prison had been on lockdown. No one going in, no one coming out. _He couldn't have known_.

You hate yourself in this moment for wanting him like you had. You hate yourself because you could never tell him, never admit it, never say the words. Those minutes in the basement, in the corner, on the mattress, against the wall, you'd wanted him. You didn't want Fin to save you. You didn't want another guard to see, to stop him. You'd wanted it to be Elliot. You'd wanted him to take you, hold you, make everything okay. Despite all rationale, you'd wanted it to be him. You'd hoped for it to be him that found you.

You had known that seeing you like that would break him, but you'd wanted it anyway. You had known it was impossible, but you'd wanted it anyway. And when Fin had found you, pulled Harris away, you'd wanted it to be Elliot's hands pulling you to stand and Elliot's hands slamming Harris's wrists into the cuffs and Elliot's eyes boring into yours because he was the one you'd needed. He could have fixed it.

If he had seen it, you wouldn't have had to keep it from him. And you wouldn't have had to tell him either.

You're selfish in this.

Because you'd wanted him then just like you want him now.

"I know," he admits. "But I... I needed to see you, Olivia. To... be there. I just, I needed to protect you because I wouldn't have known how to when you didn't tell me about it. _I don't know how_, Liv." The words leave him in a whisper that is as soft as it is forced, and you know that he doesn't want to let them spill. But you are both too tired to keep locking away the truth, and you know that he's right. He wouldn't have known to stop you from falling simply because you wouldn't have let him.

_He wouldn't have known_.

"I need you to," you breathe. And since you've already embarrassed yourself enough, you might as well damn the rest of your dignity to hell while you've still got the opportunity. "I need you."

His eyes are on yours. They've picked up from your wrists, and you think you're suffocating somewhere underneath his waves. You remember your mother telling you when you were a little girl about how Virginia Woolf drowned herself and thought it was a love story, and maybe that's exactly what you're doing now, because there's no way that you remember how to inhale and exhale when he's feeling you like this. Touching you. When his fingers are grasping your skin.

You are drowning. Again. Or maybe you've just been drowning every single minute before this one, and maybe this is the breath.

It has to be, you think, because he isn't backing away. His hands are still on you, he is still kneeling in front of where you have sat, again, in your desk chair. You're cold, and you wonder when your goosebumps had come and when they will go, if he will take them with him when he leaves. You wonder if his hands had brought the cold from inside of you, and now it's in the air, floating between the two of you and pressing against the both of your bones. You think of puzzles, fleetingly, and how you're supposed to fill in the edges first before you fill in the middle.

Maybe that's what this is, you think. Maybe it's the middle. And since he's not leaving, you can be okay with that. You've just told him that you needed him—not in the saving, the running, the watching your back or chasing away the men with knives or flowers or whatever else they've brought to your door—just because. _I need you_.

"I know," he scratches, because it can't be speaking when his breath is so close to your face. You wonder when he got this close, and you look in the eyes that are looking into yours and wonder when the hell you both got this broken. "Need you too," he mumbles. "I need you too, Liv."

Red breaths fill blue lungs.

"I'm sorry," you tell him.

"Don't be," he answers, and you don't know if he knows why. If he did, he couldn't forgive you. Not like this.

"No, Elliot—" your voice cracks and your eyes fill, and tears, the wayward little bastards, fall down your cheeks in erroneous, fat lumps. "I, I'm sorry. When he, when he had me down there... I wanted you. I was fine. I'm fine, and Fin came, but_ I wanted you_." You're disgusted.

"Olivia." His eyes search yours, and it's almost frantic the way he looks at you, and you think that he must be looking you the way one looks at broken glass that needs to be picked up before it slices, fights, and shatters further. He can't possibly hold all the pieces of you. "Oh, Liv... Liv," and you wonder why he's saying your name over and over and over like that until it dawns on you that you're crying, that the tears are coming faster now, faster than before.

"I'm so sorry, Elliot," you choke. "I'm so, so sorry. I—I was _stupid_, it was so, so _stupid, _Elliot, and I-I was scared and you can't—I didn't mean to. I didn't want to." You're losing it. You are absolutely losing your shit, and he's pulling you into him again and you don't know why. You are a pile of misplaced pity and you think that you've ruined him now, too, because you've allowed this guilt to spread. You're giving him all the things you shouldn't be giving to anyone but yourself, or to Harris, because he couldn't have known.

He couldn't have known to come for you, save you. He couldn't have.

You remind yourself of this, repeatedly, and shun your arms for grabbing at him and his shirt and holding on like he's the only thing keeping you upright. It makes you sicker that, in reality, he _is_ the only thing keeping you upright, and the only absolution you are desperate for.

"Hey, hey," he whispers into your hair, and you feel his fingers lock soothingly in the hair at the base of your neck before running through the short strands. He sighs. "You're okay," he whispers. "It's okay. Don't... you can't be sorry, Liv."

"I should be," you whisper, because you don't understand.

"Nah," he tells you, "it's... when you..." he is going to say something important, and you go weak and feel it coming before the words can fall. He is a train and you are standing on the tracks, seeing the lights in the seconds before the impact. "When you love somebody, Liv, it's not... it's not rational. It's not supposed to make sense. When you love somebody, your head does all sorts of weird shit, and you need them when you aren't supposed to, and you need to save them when you can't, and you can't be sorry for it because you can't stop it from coming. You can't stop it from showing up and making you crazy."

Your hands stop shaking, and it stops being cold. Something is expelled from deep inside of you, and you wonder what the hell happens now, when all the words are about to be between you. "You're a little presumptuous now, aren't you?" you say, and your sarcasm is transparent in the wake of your voice—broken and cracked and caught, red handed. You force a laugh, because you still don't know. He is holding you but he has never loved you back before, and you have never loved him openly.

He chuckles, and pulls back to rest his forehead on yours. "Loving you makes me a mad man, Liv," he breathes. It's rough, and delicate, and weird. You swallow.

You love him.

And that is one thing you know.


End file.
